Category Archives: Kids

Saving Money By Buying Used Clothes For Kids

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Kid's clothes

Okay, this is a little off subject for me, but today, I want to talk about kid’s cloths.  When they are babies, is it really worth the money to buy that cute little pink “bunny print” shirt for $20.00, or that little “blue sailor” outfit for $35.00 dollars?

As we all know, babies grow at an incredibly fast rate, in fact, it’ll seem like they are hardly in that cute little outfit that you may have bought at Baby Gap, Carters, or Babies R Us.  So to save money, we borrowed hand me downs from neighbors and friends.  At least with my son we did.  With my daughter, my wife buys here cute outfits more often.

Buying baby and kids clothes at neighborhood garage sales and using hand me downs from friends is the way to go.  Trust me, for the first few years they go through the clothes so quickly, that you won’t even notice it…  Besides if you look, you can find some really great deals at garage sales.  Don’t be shy, ask for a lower price if it’s not marked low enough.

So when should you break the pattern of buying used clothes for kids?  Well, IMHO, I think the best time to start to buy new clothes would be around the 1st grade.  After all, this is the time the kids start to develop their own style.  You don’t have to buy all new clothes, we mixed it, maybe 50/50.

Now some of you guys might be thinking… not me.  Well, it wasn’t me doing the buying either it was my wife.  At first I thought, don’t do that…  until she explained to me how much she was saving us by going this.  At a garage sale, you can buy baby clothes for .25 to .50 cents per piece of clothing!  That a huge discount considering buying it new could cost $10 to $20 dollars per piece, please consider going this route.

My wife saved us thousands of dollars by buying baby (and kids) clothes!!!

Sabotaged Financial Lessons For My Son

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Sometimes life throws you a curveball, and you have to adapt as much as possible!

  

Life throwing...

My son is in debt to me for a whole $36 dollars, and won’t be debt free until the beginning of the month of April.  At that point, the idea was that he would save around $20 a month for a Pokemon Game (Pokemon Gold?) that he wants desperately.  So I was hoping that he would save his money up after pay off his debt, to buy the game.  The entire process would take about 4 months?  I was even going to take him to get is favorite desert (peanut butter chocolate pie, yum)! 

So he would experience 3 lessons (which I posted about: Financial Lessons Learned By My Son Today!). 

In addition to these lessons, I was planning on teaching him about:

  1. How to get out of debt.
  2. How to plan and save up for things (I was even going to create a very simple tracking spreadsheet).

As for #1, that is already in motion, and he’s doing extra work to pay off the debt (He’s a good kid, and apparently doesn’t like being in debt… much like his proud dad). 

As for #2…, Well, that’s been sabatoged by my parents!  They already bought him the Pokemon game, and it’s going to be a present for Easter.  Since they are my elders (not to mention my parents), I’m not going to steal their thunder on something so trivial (I’m flexible)… 

So what am I going to do? 

Well, continue with the debt repayment, because their actions does not really affect that.  As long as he doesn’t know about the gift… 

Then continue with the saving plan, at least the creation of the spreadsheet!  The spreadsheet could be a good lesson in itself. Plus, we’ll use it for the next big thing… 

Has good intentions by family ever thrown you a curveballs like this?  And if they did…, did you still make the best of it and hit a homerun or even just a base hit, like I did? 

– MR

My Thoughts on Allowances For Less Than Rich Kids

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Allowance

 

With allowances, it seems like I hear the same broken record erh CD that keeps playing the same song: “3 separate banks, 1 for savings, 1 for spending, and 1 for charity“.  It’s always the same message over and over.  And of course it’s always an even split between the three (so 33% each).

I’m going to challenge this “taken for gospel” line of thinking!  First, I think that this Mantra should really only apply to the rich folk (if they want to)!  Their kids are probably getting over 5 times as much as my kids for allowance.   So paying 30% to charity probably wouldn’t faze them much.

So I decided to bend the rules and give my interpretation of what the allowance percentage each socio-economical (upper middle, middle and poor) classes should pay.  We already discussed the rich up above, but I would like to say, I honestly don’t believe the majority of them force their kids to dole out 30% to charity either!

Upper Middle Class:

This group is the impressers!  I’m sure they are the closest group to contributing the full proscribed 30% allocation that they believe the rich follow.  And since they can afford it, they can do as they believe.  I would guess that the average 10 year old in this group could potentially make anywhere from 50 to maybe 100 dollars a week.

Middle Class:

This group is the silent masses, they represent around 60% of the population.  Most of us that do give allowances to our kids, give a dollar amount of the age of the child.  so my 6 year old gets $6 and my 9 year old gets $9.  I’m sure a good percentage of us follows that 3 by 30% rule, but not me.  My kids split the allowance around 50% for savings, 50% for spending.  They also get piggy bank money, and 50% of that goes to charity.  We only give to charity at Christmas time.   If you take the sum of all their money, The charity portion averages out to be about 10% to 20% of all of the money they get from allowance and the old piggy bank.

Why Christmas?  Because for one, this is the time to be charitable!  We all have that extra warm feeling in our heart and soul to go that extra mile to help our fellow human beings (or at least that’s the way I feel).

Working Poor and The Poor:

These groups, if they do give an allowance, most likely give less that a $1 per age.  And even then they really shouldn’t!  They just can’t afford it.  They shouldn’t have to feel the guilt associated with the 3 by 30% generally accepted rule.

So the next time you hear that liberal message on how to divy up your money… ask yourself, does it make sense for you and your family at this particular time in your life!

Tell me what you think?  Does what I say make sense, or should I force current societies socialist views on the distribution of wealth to  my kids?

After all, how can I teach my kids to work for a dollar, when he would be literally giving away his money to people that don’t?  What kind of screwy financial lesson would that be?!?

-D

Financial Lessons Learned By My Son Today!

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Pokemon Kitty

Well something amazing happened today. My son all of a sudden wanted to sell his old Nintendo DS games and Transformer Toys that he never plays with.

So we hopped on eBay and did a search for his DS games that he wanted to sell. Unfortunately, they only were worth about $5 to $10 dollars. I winced a little at the hurt look on this face. Some of his transformer will go for over $10, but not much more, maybe top side will be $20.

So after a few eBay searches, I asked him why he wanted to sell them… That when he told me. He wanted to buy a new Pokemon DS game that just came out. But just last week he spend all of his money and took a $40 loan out from me to buy a $120 Lego Star Wars ship… And now he’s realizing he should have held off on the purchase! He learned a small lesson in opportunity costs. You see he has about 25 Lego star wars models already, and he’s been waiting for the new Pokemon DS game to come out!

So what lesson did he learn?

  • The first lesson, not to go in debt! He won’t be able to afford that DS game until mid summer.
  • 2nd lesson,diminishing returns on the Lego Star Wars ships… I mean how many of these does he really need?
  • 3rd it smart to keep some money aside for be events that are important. So he learned about a weak form of an emergency fund (although it’s not really totally that, it’s similar enough…)

I refused to give him the money to by the new game. To do so would ruin the lesson. I do feel bad that all of his friends will have the game and will have mastered it by the time he finally get it. But I think the lesson is much more important!

So it was a tough day for a nine year old!

-D